According to experts, there is a rise in legal disputes between landlords and tenants across Dubai due to surging property prices, which have led to increase in rental costs and illegal evictions in the emirate.
The last year and this year has seen a rebound in Dubai’s realty market, as the economy of the emirate was able to make a strong recovery post-COVID-19.
Due to this, a number of residents have had to face steep hikes in rent and there were also increasing incidents of landlords evicting tenants unlawfully, as they wanted to generate higher earnings on rising property prices.
Legal disputes
This has prompted a rising number of tenants to take legal action against their former landlords and are looking to sue them for a year’s rent after they were forced to leave their homes.
According to legal experts, there has been an influx of complaints from tenants against their landlords that were recorded by the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) of the Dubai Land Department.
These landlords had demanded a rent hike of 50% from their existing tenants in order to force them to vacate their properties, or to renew their contracts.
Some of the demands that these landlords made were in violation of the tenants’ rights and the rent control rules outlined by the government.
The increases
There is a cap of 20% increase in the rent, depending on the changes in the market price of the area in question.
But, rent increases can go higher than 20% if the tenant and landlord decide to have private negotiations and come to an agreement.
Some of the landlords who want higher rents have chosen to evict their existing tenants in order to find new ones at inflated prices.
It is a fact that there has been an increase in demand recorded in the real estate market in the UAE since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, particularly in Dubai.
There has been a steady increase in rent and landlords want to maximize their ROI by leveraging the favorable market conditions.
The situation
The UAE economy does benefit from the real estate market trend, as landlords are able to generate higher rental returns and the UAE real estate sector can attract more investors.
But, some of the landlords have opted to take advantage of the situation by going beyond the RERA index for increasing the rent of their properties.
There are some tenants who may want to save on moving costs, or not want to pay the cost of leading, so they may give into the demand of their landlords.
But, there is no doubt that the significant increase in rent is proving to be a big challenge for some tenants and this has led to the rental disputes.
Even though there is no exact statistic available about the number of rental cases in a year, there has been a rise in the number of people searching for legal advice related to rental disputes.
Before and after the pandemic, these disputes were related to default in rental payments, but things changed post-pandemic.
